A climate protester has received a suspended jail term after locking herself to a train carriage during two days of action against a controversial north Queensland coal mine, an activist group says.
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Juliet Lamont was arrested on Tuesday after protesters attached themselves to railway tracks and trains outside Bowen in a bid to stop what they believed was Carmichael mine's first transport of coal.
Ms Lamont - a 50-year-old mother of two - was handed a one month prison term, suspended for nine months, in a Bowen court on Thursday, Frontline Action on Coal says.
"I feel a profound moral obligation to protect our futures," Ms Lamont said in a statement.
"I know I couldn't live with myself and couldn't look my daughters in the eye if I did nothing so I'm taking direct action."
Ms Lamont had been refused bail and held in custody after she was arrested during two days of protests by the Frontline Action on Coal group.
"If the police, courts and governments of Australia put as much effort into punishing those who are destroying our climate as they do to those trying to save it, maybe we wouldn't be in the ecological crisis that we are," Frontline Action on Coal's Andy Paine said of Ms Lamont's suspended jail term.
But a representative for Bravus, formally known as Adani, said more should be done to deter activists, claiming their staff had been left "traumatised" by a 2018 protest by Ms Lamont.
"Ms Lamont has a history of putting herself and others in danger by trespassing and illegally locking onto port conveyors and trains," the official said in a statement.
"In recent weeks she locked onto conveyors at the Abbot Point terminal and at Hay Point terminal.
"In 2018 she was charged after locking onto live conveyors in the dead of night with three other people at the Abbot Point terminal.
"That incident left port staff traumatised as had conveyors been activated Ms Lamont and her friends could have been seriously injured or even killed.
"Governments are not making sure there are sufficient deterrents and penalties to stop the activists who put their own lives at risk by locking onto conveyors, coal trains and railway lines."
Police on Tuesday removed a total of six Frontline Action on Coal activists in three separate protests on the railway line from Bravus' Carmichael mine to an export terminal north of Bowen.
A day later a protester stopped work by Bravus at the Abbot Point port terminal by suspending himself from machinery.
Carmichael mine, in the Galilee Basin about 400km west of Mackay, has been at the centre of numerous environmental protests and campaigns in the decade since it was first proposed.
Australian Associated Press
